It’s pretty wild that the most rabidly anti-immigrant administration in recent memory is comprised of a President married to an immigrant, a VP married to the daughter of immigrants, an assistant AG in charge of Civil Rights who’s an immigrant (Dhillon), & it was all funded by an immigrant (Musk).
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.
Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."
Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
Devastating. Teen Vogue's politics coverage has been incredible and this is a major loss for journalism.
Legacy journalism keeps on getting rid of the only people making it worth anything anymore.
"Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here." Anna Bower Monday, October 20, 2025, 5:40 PM Share On: f X inK My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.
EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification.
I glanced down at the message.
“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began.
So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies.
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary. Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe. Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.
Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat? This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight: * Waste of public resources on military theatrics. * Fraud in the name of “public safety.” * Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect. Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here. When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness. Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control. Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard. Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
Screenshot from Farm Bureau article on farm bankruptcies. It shows farm bankruptcies climbing steadily 2014-2020, falling by half in 2021, & continuing to fall through 2023.
Farm bankruptcies are back in the news, so it's time to pull this chart out again.
Hey look they kept rising during Trump's first term. Then they went way down under Biden.
Now they're up again? So weird. Thanks Farm Bureau for the graphic
1. Great news for trans students in Chicago.
Chicago Public Schools has announced it will defy Trump's demand to ban trans youth from bathrooms.
Trump will now pull millions in federal funds.
"Our district will not back away from doing what we know is right."
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Your daily reminder to fuck off with yelling at trans people to either forfeit their rights or spoil the proverbial picnic
"They released their insane asylum population into our country" -- Trump still thinks that people who make political asylum claims come from insane asylums
I’ve found it’s more visually appealing to just paste in his head at the inflection points
To all the people who said "you might be autistic, you should get diagnosed" this is why I didn't.
They will literally say that they want to end Autism. When I've pointed out that this means ending the existence of Autistcs, I've had people "explain" to me that they don't want me killed or anything (how kind), but just don't want any more born. 🙄
I’m autistic, I pay taxes, I shit poetry, and I’ve gone on dates more mind-blowingly awesome than RFK Jr is capable of imagining.
"Untrue, impossible, & ableist": We join @autisticadvocacy.org in condemning HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s ignorant, absurd promise that “by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures.”
autisticadvocacy.org/2025/04/trum...
To all the HSPers out there wondering
“am I Autistic?”
*Many* of my *Autistic* peers asked themself the same Question …
And many Autistic ppl just assume you are Autistic if you say
“I have HSP”
… we know that the penny is likely to drop for you on its own.
1. In a devastating ruling, the traditionally progressive 9th Circuit Court has allowed Idaho's bathroom ban for trans students.
They rule that "common experience" is enough to assume trans students are a harm to cis ones.
The panel was majority Dem appointed.
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(Write it!)
Democrats must start with the truth that, because the Republican Party is an insurrectionist organization that opposes humanity and reality, they are fundamentally illegitimate—that any position any Republican holds is held illegitimately, and proceed accordingly. www.the-reframe.com/the-moon-is-...
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